Red Shift Blues
by Helen1969
Summary: When a container with a tragic cargo is taken on board the Arcadia, Harlock's resident pain-in-the-ass crewman, Ali, turns out to be the best man for the job of making those responsible pay dearly - but old enemies lead the mouthy pirate into so much trouble, even Harlock might not be able to pull him out... (post-Frozen Harvest: Yama-Harlock, Ali)
_Once again, this one's for Pollywantsaharlock. Who's never going to believe that I'd already written the bit with the packing crates before I saw chapter 4. Blue tits and milkbottle tops... Thank you for the encouragement and the inspiration! And yes, Corpse Flower is continuing, but this kind of came out of some email discussions and almost wrote itself ..._

* * *

Let's just get the obligatory bio out of the way first. My name's Ali - at least, it is now. Somewhere maybe Mom's kicking up a storm in whatever afterlife may or may not exist, since that's not the name she gave me when Mrs. Jones' little boy first came forth into the world with a scowl and a growl, but thanks to two of my longest serving comrades in arms sharing the same damn speech impediment, it stuck. Most people assume it's short for Alexander. Which is at least in the right geographical locale of Old Earth.

Oh. I mentioned comrades in arms? Yeah. That's right, I'm a pirate. On the biggest, baddest, nastiest piece of ironmongery ever to sail the Sea of Stars...

Fuck. Now they've got me doing it... Space, dammit. _Space_.

I sail with Captain Harlock.

Yep. The very same. Sorta. Kinda.

It's complicated. We're Under New Management (tm). Have been for a couple of years now. Can't say I thought we'd traded up at first, even if the old captain turned out to be a whack job intent on destroying the universe because of a major sulk he'd been having for the best part of a century...

When I jokingly suggested that at least the rookie _started_ out by selling us out and had hopefully got it out of his system, our deceptively angelic XO had me cleaning out the turret coolant sluices for a week. _Note to self: don't diss the new boy where his girlfriend can hear you..._

Yeah. About that... eight years of most of the straight guys on the ship being given the stink eye, and our weaselly new boss is into that tight flightsuit in under a week... huh. Still not quite sure how he managed it... back then he was a skinny thing, mousy hair, got that kind of boy-next-door look going but not a patch (no pun intended..) on the other guy who had this whole fallen-archangel look working for him, and yeah, before you ask, even the guys who weren't wired that way could find themselves having inappropriate thoughts late at night...

Wait. What? Get your mind out of the gutter. Not me. I like the lasses, and preferably one with a bit of meat on her bones... plenty to hold onto in the clinches, if you get my drift?

Seems Kei likes the whole whipped puppy dog routine though. How else to explain the otherwise unexplainable? It's that, or admit I got him completely wrong and she just saw the real man before the rest of us got our heads out of our asses. I'd written him off as an entitled pretty boy desperate to impress his pyscho of a big brother. The truth was altogether nastier, and how the kid ain't a basket case is beyond me. But there you go. Some people get the shitty end of the stick and it's all about the payback. The captain... well. It's hard to rile him.

You wanna be in a different star system if you do...

I get asked a lot by the new guys (and girls...) what the hell is so special about the captain that we'd all follow him into hell if he asked. It ain't something you can explain, easily. Sure, there's the reputation he 'inherited', and he's making his own, slowly. As I said, he kinda looks looks like the boy next door at first glance. You know, the one I wouldn't mind my sister bringing home, if I had one. And it ain't a front. He really _is_ that damn nice, it's just...

It's just easier to give you an example, I guess...

* * *

 **Earth calendar 2980.**

Taking out these cargo ships is ridiculously easy, when you're sporting more firepower than half a dozen tiered class fleet ships. Being practically indestructible helps. Two years into this nasty little war, and most captains just bend over and grab the Vaseline when we hail them and order them to heave to.

Emeraldas made retching noises and mimed sticking her fingers down her throat when I made that little crack. 'Seriously, I'll need to brain bleach _that_ image...' she snarled at me.

I just laughed. Winding up the stuck up little cow is a pleasure to be savoured. Gaia help us all when she grows up. At fifteen she's a holy terror. And a prude. I pity the poor bastard she ends up with. She'll make his life a living hell...

But she flounced off, leaving me and Maji to look over our haul. The hangar was stacked with shipping crates, and we were checking the manifest. Three crates in, and I was starting to get a real bad pricking at the back of my neck. .. and it wasn't the dark matter drive kicking in... that one's a whole different flavour of reflux. ..

'Ali'

The captain had snook onto the deck whilst I'd had my head down, matching crate numbers to manifest. Kei must have been nagging him again because his duds were snappier than usual. Left to his own devices he'd slop around in battered spacer leathers like the rest of us. He avoided black like the plague still, but she did sometimes shoehorn him into a snazzy midnight blue jacket over his flightsuit, though her efforts to get him to embrace the whole space pirate thing met with stubborn resistance more often than not.

She'd long ago lost the battle on him rolling his sleeves up though. And he tends to wear gloves and boots to destruction. Scruffy bugger.

'Your sources were right. Rare earths out the yinyang,' I told him. 'Zero was spot on, this little lot would make a lot of would-be dial heads happy. Ytterbium, Promethium, Samarium... Dysprosium... and a lot of ready to wear alloys that don't just roll off the production line. Did Yattaran get the black box?'

He nodded. 'I'm thinking a little side trip might be in order...'

I liked where he was going with this. Interrupting shipments is one thing. But that's just tweaking their noses. No, what I'd argued for doing was cutting off supply at the source - and that meant tracking the ore and finished alloy shipments back to their point of origin.

But back to my itchy neck hair. I grabbed him by the arm and hauled him over to the crate I'd been eyeballing when he came in.

'You could try asking, Ali,' he muttered, in that softly spoken way he's got. I grunted at him and jabbed my finger at the nasty little reddish brown stain on the outside of the metal case. Right on a joint, to be specific.

Leaking, if you really need me to draw you a map. 'You might want to get Maji to open this one up. I've got a feeling there's something not on the manifest inside.'

'That's blood...' he bent down to take a closer look.

'No shit, Harlock..' I muttered back. It got me the _The Look_ from his one visible eye.

Forgot to mention it, did I? Yep. He wears an eyepatch. Covers up some nasty blaster burns under and around his right eye. Oh, he's got an eyeball under there. It just doesn't work. At least, he can't see out of it for shit, and if he leaves it uncovered for too long the residual damage to his optic nerve from having a nanocam go tits up gives him a vicious migraine.

The fried cam and the blaster scar across his face came courtesy of his adoring big brother. Who also manipulated the poor kid as a teen into signing his soul away on the dotted line by guilt tripping him over some dumb accident and playing him like a fiddle, managing to finesse his childhood crush and try to get him to willingly place his neck and/or nadgers on the chopping block in the name of furthering his own meteoric career into the bargain. Selfish prick. If I were the captain, I'd be hoping to find out I'd been adopted...

He called our taciturn engineer over, and together we looked into getting a secured shipping container open without damaging the contents.

Oh, and in case a sense of scale is needed, these are... oh, about six feet high and wide, about double that in length. So to be on the safe side I called up Cai, Mattias and Carlos, and had them stand by with guns pointed at the hatch.

We got caught out that way a year back. Dialhead saboteur hiding in a food shipment. These days, we check things out a bit more carefully before they go into storage. Hence all this fannying around on the hangar deck, with a couple of our very own specially prejudicial to dialheads blasters pointing at the door.

Maji grunted and stepped back. After all these years I speak fluent Maji. 'Good to go, captain.' I stepped into the danger zone and grabbed the handle that slid the bolt back down, pulling the door towards me.

Which is why I was the one gagging and tossing my lunch up over the decking when the smell hit me. The captain and Carlos both looked a bit green around the gills, I saw when I could stop my eyeballs from bleeding.

Death has a scent you can't mistake. This... this was ripe, and not in the did-a-rat-die-in-the-vents way. I grabbed the torch Carlos was waving around ineffectually, and stepped into the charnel house stench, figuring that I had less to lose than the rest of 'em, since the contents of my stomach were already cooling on the deck.. The click of boots behind me told me Harlock wasn't far behind, though he was having difficulty choking.

Behind a small row of crates, the reason for the smell was all too apparent. Must have been about a dozen small bodies tucked away behind those boxes, wrapped up in an inadequate nest of thin, frayed blankets and rags that might once have been clothes.

The eldest had probably been no older than Emeraldas or Zack...

From close to my ear I heard a very soft 'fuck'. I grabbed his arm as he tried to push past.

'Wait, captain. It's a bloody tragedy, but what's to stop the dialheads using these as a cover for something nasty? They know you're a soft touch for civilian casualties. A bomb or a biological attack ain't beyond 'em.'

He might have listened and moved out to let me get some boys in to check things out, if one of the corpses hadn't moved, and groaned. At that point you'd have had to tether him to the Arcadia to stop him, and despite having the build and chops to bring him screeching to a standstill, I knew better than to get in his way when he's off on one. The sneaky little bugger fights dirty for one thing.

The pile of small corpses moved slightly, and a filthy face stared up at us, as Harlock knelt down next to it. A boy. Small, but whether that was age or just malnutrition, I couldn't tell. So thin you could see every rib through the holes in his shirt, and the bony arm he held out with an improvised shiv in it trembled as he glared at the captain like a feral cat. But the flesh was weaker than his spirit, because he toppled forwards into the captain's arms, and only Harlock's reactions stopped the poor kid from falling onto his own blade.

Harlock looked up at me and I was glad that holding the torch meant no-one would see my shiver at the look in that single eye. 'Ali.'

I also speak fluent captain by now as well. 'Get Doc,' I called back to Carlos, who was lurking nervously near the entrance to the container. When he didn't move fast enough I added a snarled 'now!' And smirked as he scuttled to obey. Then I had to turn my attention back to the horror within the damn container, cursing under my breath. Coz I just knew where this little mess was gonna take us.

The acid burns were unmistakable...

* * *

Harlock gathered us in his room a few hours later. By us, that's the main bridge officers - Kei, me, Yattaran, Maji, Anita, Levary and, sipping red wine on the sofa and watching from the sidelines, one weird-ass pale skinned alien chick. Mimay. Oh, and Doc, who was giving her report. The last of our number was taking a long needed nap, or so the captain had informed us a few days back.

Doc Sado was giving us a rundown of the sad discovery in the crate.

'Twelve children, stuffed into the back. Ages between six and fourteen years, except for one small baby. The boy is about twelve to fourteen, difficult to tell for sure. Two little girls survived, ages approximately nine and seven, and the biggest surprise was the baby, though I think they were practically starving themselves to keep the younger ones alive. Three bodies were practically mummified - the air in that thing was pretty dry, though they were lucky...' she paused. Yeah. Luck didn't cover it. Might have been a mercy if the ship they were on had been a transport with a depressurised hold, or the crate they were in had been vacuum sealed...

She continued: 'they must have died a couple of weeks ago. The rest... between forty-eight hours to seven days. Cause of death - I'd suggest exposure and starvation pretty much cover it. It must have gotten pretty damned cold in that container, and small bodies, poorly fed...' she didn't need to draw us a map, it was, sadly, something we'd all seen too often since this war started.

The dialheads have a strategy for 'clearing' worlds. They take the over tens, because the process doesn't work too well on younger brains. That leaves thousands of small children with no-one to take care of them. Sometimes they take the really young ones for harvesting. Depends on how many transports they can bring to bear on a clean-up, as they call it.

It sounds like a great pitch, in theory. Live forever, in a mechanical body. Never get sick, or old, or die.

At least as long as you can afford the parts.

What they don't tell you is that to keep some vestige of your humanity, and not turn into an apathetic pile of junk good for nothing but working in some mid-management post in a corporation or government, you need to consume the life force harvested from other humans. It's also like crack, for machineheads.

Sick fucks. Bad for those forced into it, who tend to end up as cannon fodder on the front lines of Queen Promethium's three way dukeroo with the remains of the Gaia Sanction and the SDF who protect the outer worlds. But some people actually volunteer for this shit. And some of 'em don't give a rat's arse about their own kids when immortality is dangled in front of them like a shiny toy. Either way, the kids suffer.

Then... oh, and this is the bit that _really_ gets up our noses on the Arcadia... then, quite often some miserable bastards who run the big mega-corps get these great ideas about all this free child labour just left lying around. And these pieces of excrement are still fucking _human_. Allegedly.

By the time we're through with 'em, they're generally slightly greasy skid marks on the ground. The captain has a 'terminate with extreme prejudice' policy towards anyone who hurts kids. That this puts our handful of guys and gals and one - admittedly badass- battleship up against an entire empire of evil cyborgs kind of goes without saying. Or as the captain puts it 'we're not outnumbered, we just have a really big target selection...'

And we had a new target... I took the floor from Doc. 'The kids all had acid burns on their arms legs, and chests. The transport belonged to the Doppler Mining Corp, operating out of a system not far from Heavy Meldar, which puts them outside Gaia, SDF and Machinners territory. They kind of seceded a year or two back. Doppler himself is one of those opportunistic bastards who's just primed to snatch an opportunity to feather his own nest. And I've wanted a piece of this fucker for a long time.' I gave the table my nastiest grin. 'Back before I came aboard I ran afoul of his boys a few times. They made a habit of railroading small claims and independents. Tend not to leave survivors, if you get my drift.'

'What have the burns to do with it?' Levary asked. The old timer was former fleet, joined up after the Earth debacle three years ago. These days I didn't hold that against him. Even if I no longer have the best set of muttonchops on the ship.

'Acid. Typically, when mining in zero g, you can't blow shit up, without expensive force fields, containment nets, and a shit load of red tape. But the laws of physics take a dim view of the process, and tethering thousands of small pieces of reaction mass... well. It can be done, but it costs. If you miss any fragments you can kiss goodbye to entire shipping lanes and if you really screw the pooch you keystrike any nearby planets. They also light up the area for any passing patrol, so if you're a penny pinching sociopath with an eye on the bottom line and a way to avoid the oversight authorities, you clear out your asteroids with acid scourers. That way you can use the shell of the object as its own container, pressurise it using a polymer coating to deal with any gaps, and process in situ with the right gear. It's also used in legit operations, under, I should add, expert guidance from a fully accredited astro-geochemist.'

'We know your credentials, you miserable bugger, ' Yattaran snorted. 'Get on with it.' I flipped the fat bastard the finger and continued

'Smaller tunnels make for better control, so little guys can make a killing if they can stomach the work. It don't pay to be scared of small spaces. So I'm guessing Doppler regularly trawls for worlds left behind by the scary-faced queen's recruitment drives, and helps himself to all the free labour he can use up and throw out with the trash. After all, they're cheaper than mining equipment, and so easily replaced. ..' I snarled that by the end. No apologies. It gets to me just as much as it does the captain.

Probably because at one point, before I wised up and took to looking at the world through the targetting viewer of the Arcadia's main battery, I worked for the bastard.

Yeah. We all have things we thought rebooting the universe would cure lurking in our pasts. Things we'd done. Things we'd seen. Things that were done to us.

Things we turned a blind eye to...

Kei leaned back in her chair, conveniently angled to take advantage of our captain's inability to keep his hands off her if she's within touching distance, and, true to form, he provided the neck rub on autopilot. 'When the boy comes round, you think he might be able to tell us where they escaped from?'

'That's a long shot, but between the black box, anything the kids can tell us and an analysis of the cargo, I can narrow it down. Most of these systems were surveyed when they were settled, and Tochiro's databanks should be able to find a match. Plus, the big clue is the Promethium... that stuff doesn't turn up all on its ownsome in nature. That takes a manufacturing plant handling fissionables, and that, my friends, is like lighting a bonfire on a hilltop...' I sat back down feeling very pleased with my cleverness. I get off quite nicely on being the big dumb muscle, but since the change of leadership... well. Keeping my brain switched off now chafed like week old underwear, and shades of the old me just kept bobbing up to the surface.

That's the captain's influence. More than a decade spent keeping my fool head down and playing dumb, and now I'm running round like the rest of 'em wanting to play hero, like a dog trotting back to its master with a stick in its jaws, wagging its tail and waiting for the pat on the head.

Kid's a bad influence, that's for sure. But damn me if I'm not waiting for that slight nod and almost imperceptible one-sided smile that tells me I've done good... He flashed me that little smile as he turned from Kei and leaned his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers. 'So how do you suggest we proceed?' he asked, all innocence, like he didn't know he was putting me on the spot.

I wasn't inclined to back down. Some shit needs shoveling from time to time. No use bitching about getting your hands dirty. 'We can't just fly in all guns blazing. Not that we can't take down Doppler's private fleet, but no-one here is willing to risk casualties. We want those kids out. A quick recce to find out what we're up against, take out some key defenses, and call in a few markers to mop up the refuse. If we get him the proof, Danny boy will happily shut this operation down, he just needs a good reason to move in.'

That's the trade off sometimes. The SDF / SPG are tasked with policing the outer worlds, but they have things called rules... which get in the way of getting stuff done. We have firepower out the arse, and we don't do rules, but the reason Colonel Ichimonji (apart from the bit where he sorta likes Harlock) doesn't try to collect the sizeable bounty on our heads is that we mostly play nice and don't kick up a shitstorm in his backyard. It gives him a convenient excuse to tell his opposite number in the former Gaia Fleet where to stick his arrest warrants without causing another war.

It's all bullshit, and all three sides - Harlock, Ichimonji and Hoshino - know it. But so long as Ichimonji calls the shots out here, the captain is happy enough to give the rope to him to hang most of the scum who deserve it. The few occasions where we've _had_ to deal with something ourselves, he operates on a 'better to ask forgiveness than permission' basis. Only without the asking for forgiveness bit. Which pisses Ichimonji off no end, because the stiff bastard is a stickler at times, but they generally beat each other to a pulp on the practice mats and end up best buddies again over a bottle of scotch or two.

'You volunteering?' The captain asks me. I folded my arms and just glared at him.

'I doubt most of you know how to get into one of these outfits and know what to look for. Yeah. I'm volunteering. I know what we need. See if we can get the kids out safely. Proof of illegal labour, violation of basic safety procedures and proof they're dealing with Lar Metal by smuggling prohibited materials across SDF controlled space. All wrapped up in the nice little package that Colonel Tightarse needs to rain down on 'em and maybe even cause the head honcho himself some temporary grief...'

'You don't think we can make anything stick to Doppler?' he asked, raising his eyebrow.

I snorted. 'Much though I'd love that, the pointy eared bastard is teflon coated. But cutting off a major operation like this will hit him where it hurts. Unless I can talk you into just heading over to his private planet and just aiming the Arcadia's main battery at it?'

The Look. V2.0. I sighed. 'Cap'n, one day you are going to have to actually realise that sometimes, the big stick is necessary. You've got the most powerful battleship ever built, using it from time to time ain't a crime.'

'Ali...' I'd now got Kei's warning look. But she knows as well as I do, he still has what you might call 'issues' about wading into a fight all guns blazing, and getting innocent bystanders hurt. Trying to persuade him that Doppler's Chosen Few who populate his personal paradise are far from innocent... well. Some things he'll find out for himself, I guess. But our captain's sometime tendency to sit on his hands and not make a decision is another crotch-chafer of epic proportions.

There, are, however, a few things that can get him jumping into the fray.

Four of 'em were currently in our infirmary.

* * *

Doc sent word down the next day that the boy was conscious at last. I tagged along behind Harlock when he left the bridge, sauntering along with my hand stuffed in my pockets, but he's got my number these days, and slowed to let me catch up.

'Not often you jump in feet first,' he opened with, in that quiet voice of his. 'If I asked, would you tell?'

'No.' Was my short answer. He shrugged, and didn't press. He doesn't. In that, he's a lot like the last captain. Only _he_ wouldn't have asked even that much. So the walk to the infirmary is conducted in silence apart from the clanking of our boots. Though like his predecessor, Harlock never makes you feel as though you need to chatter to fill the void.

After checking in with Doc, we were admitted to the room where she'd put the kids. The two girls were sharing a bed, curled around each other. Sisters, I'd thought. Both fair haired, blue eyed, and when fed and happy, probably be a couple little beauties when they grew up. But they stared at us from under tangled hair with that same look that I used to see in Emeraldas' sister's. Seen too much, too young. They had that same watchful look when we walked in, though Kei, at their bedside, seemed to be making some progress armed with a hairbrush and a couple of dolls she'd dug up out of an old case in stores, at a guess.

The boy was sitting up curled over his knees in the next bed, that same watchful glare that reminded me more of Emeraldas - this one was a fighter. Pushed into being in charge way too young. So thin and gaunt you'd think only sinew and pure bloody-mindedness held him together. He'd fit right in on this ship.

Harlock took the chair next to the bed, and I leaned against the wall nearby, arms folded, safely out of reach but in hearing range. The captain could do the talking. Seems to have a way with kids. At least, they like him, and he doesn't talk down to 'em.

'You look a lot better. Feel up to talking? I have a few questions for you.'

The kid looked at him warily, eyeing him up from top to bottom, taking in the antique pistol at his belt, and the currently empty sabre holster. 'Are you taking us back?' His voice was a boyish treble, wavering slightly, but he met the captain's eye without flinching. Yeah. This one had guts.

'No. You're safe with us. All of you. I can't say the same for the people responsible for your plight though. But why don't we start with names? I'm Harlock, the lady over with your friends is Kei, and that slab of muscle propping up the wall is Ali.' I waved 'hi'.

'Tadashi Monono.'

I sniggered, just couldn't help myself, and caught a glare from the captain. 'Sorry. Just wondering if there was a set you had to collect or something,' I said innocently. He has a cousin with the same name; cute kid, if a bit prone to impulsive attempts to cause his parents and any carers conniptions trying to keep him in one piece.

'Tadashi, welcome aboard the Arcadia. Think you can tell me how you got on board the ship we raided?'

'Where are the others?' He asked. I saw the look that passed between Kei and the captain. Both looked a little sick, and I didn't blame 'em. Getting those little bodies out and into burial capsules had been heartbreaking.

'By the time we found you, only you three and the little boy in Doc's care were still alive. I'm sorry.' If you didn't know the captain, his calm might fool you into thinking he wasn't touched by all of this. Truth is, the quieter he gets, the worse the fallout when he finally cracks and cuts loose.

There were tears building in the kid's eyes. But something else that was recognisable as well. Anger.

'I failed.' The was a miserable quiver in his voice, and his hands had a death grip on the sheets. 'I promised them I'd save them, but they died anyway. If I'd stayed...'

'If you'd stayed they'd still have died, kid,' I spoke up, a little more gruffly than usual.

Fumes. Okay? Always weird smells in sick bay. Get in your throat. And eyes.

'This bunch... They'd work you till you dropped then chucked you out the airlock. It's what they do. Three's a win, lad. Four if you count yourself, so don't go beating yourself up for it.'

'Ali, tone it down a bit, for Earth's sake,' Kei hissed at me.

I gestured towards the kid - Tadashi. 'If he can make a man's decisions, he can take the truth, Kei. Ain't gonna talk down to him - he's earned the right to be treated like a man.'

From her eye rolling, she didn't agree, but she's a girl. They're wired differently. The captain though, he got it. Gave me a little nod, and turned his attention back to the kid who was staring at me as though I'd grown a second head. I winked at him. Flustered him a bit, but damn me if he didn't sit up straighter.

The girls were Megan and Niobe. No relation to each other or to him. He didn't know the little boy's name - his mother had been one of the older girls, who died pretty early on during their escape. His own remaining three siblings had died one by one on the journey. Harlock quietly got the descriptions from him. No sense in putting him through more horror identifying them, but we could at least give the kid some closure when we sent them on that final journey. Seems he'd been the oldest of six. Barely twelve, so still under ten when the transport ships had ravaged his planet's population. His mother had been dragged out from where their father had hidden them, right in front of the poor kid's eyes. My fingernails were digging into my palms by then, even through gloves, and from the increasing tension in the captain's back, he wasn't taking it any better. Fucking dialheads.

Then the Company had come. About six months or so later, he wasn't sure. Sent in reps to sweet-talk the kids into thinking they would be taken somewhere safe, fed, maybe even reunited with their parents (wasn't until much later he heard their guards discussing the fate of those taken by the machinners...). Rounded 'em up like sheep. Then crowded into a transport and herded off on one of the asteroid mines, and put to work.

Oh. And for anyone who can't do the math: that means they only took the ones old enough to work. Think about it. Think about how long a bunch of under fives would last on deserted planets... anyone wondering why a bunch of ne'er do well pirates got involved with a war like this might begin to understand why we do what we do.

And why our once laid back nice-guy captain occasionally blows a gasket and looks at the desk draw containing a certain detonator like it has a live snake in it that he's got the urge to pet...

So, our boy here had spent nearly eighteen months in one of those hell pits. I'd seen Doc's notes on the kids: acid burns, broken and healed fractures in brittle bones, lung damage from inhaling the fumes from the shit they used to dissolve the ores... all three kids had a nasty cough. Probably other long term damage as well from the low grav they lived and worked in.

I'd seen the same things back in my days on similar rocks, but back then, it was men and women who worked in the hell pits, not kids. What I'd seen there had been enough to send me into a bottle. This... shit. There weren't words for it. Despite his best efforts the lad was crying by the time he'd finished, and had his snotty face buried in the captain's jacket, clinging like he'd never let go. And the captain's just sitting there with his arms wrapped round this kid, just letting him get it out of his system.

Struck me then, in between trying to clear my throat of those damned fumes, that this was something I just couldn't see the old captain doing. He'd probably be great on the 'be a man' speeches, but as I heard Kei say, more than once: 'not one for cuddles'. Our guy though, big softy that he is, for all his youth (he could still pass for twenty or so on a good day, though he was just on the downward slide to thirty...) was sat there like he'd been doing this dad thing forever. That, or world's best big brother.

Oh, Ali... slow on the uptake. Yeah, he'd do the big brother thing, wouldn't he? He'd had the universe's best example of how not to do it to learn from, after all.

Damn. The air conditioner in this room needed a serious overhaul.

* * *

The Colonel - Dan to his friends - was more than amenable to having us do his dirty work for him. Though in reality, the SPG ain't supposed to play detective. They're the Special Forces equivalent of us, in a way. Kick ass, take names. Only we tend to dispense with the name taking and head straight for the asskicking.

He was on the main view screen, larger than life - and since he's about my height and even broader, that's impressive. But _Gaia_... if possible his moustache looked even longer than ever. 'What do you feed that thing?' The captain snarked at him. Dan's XO - blond and smirking and almost as imposing as his best buddy, had to bite back a snigger.

Ichimonji just ignored both of them. 'We're out of range right now and tied down. I can send a ship for back-up, but...'

'Backup?' I mouthed to Kei, who shushed me with an irritated wave. Since when do we need nursemaiding by regular fleet? We're bloody pirates for fucks sake...

'I think you mean 'taking out the trash,' the captain corrected him. Arms folded in front of him, legs apart... _oooh... the don't piss me off pose..._ On anyone else it would look defensive.

''Call it whatever makes you feel better, Harlock.' Ichimonji's pose practically mirrored the captain's. Two bulls squaring off... I don't have Hank Douglas' self control. I sniggered, and got glares from both Harlock and Kei. 'The only ship in range is the Aquarius. The crew are. .. a little different.'

'Earth's worst kept secret about the other human races who emigrated before the diaspora?' This from Mimay, gliding into view like a ghost, veils fluttering around her sea green flight suit. She's a beauty all right... if you like the willowy alien look with cat's eyes...

Ichimonji looked as though he'd swallowed some of Kei's cooking. 'I...'

'We encountered both the sea-people and the cthonians when they left Earth. Both groups even had some 'ordinary' humans amongst them. We helped them find suitable worlds, and they were settled long before the rest of humanity reached that far. They are both kind peoples. '

I'd heard legends of the amphibious humans who populated water-worlds, and I had once met a guy with a tail, who came from some cave-riddled world or something. Don't bother me none. Hell, I've even met blue and green skinned guys over the years. Had an interesting night once with a blue skinned chick with golden hair... anyways, there's all kinds of strange out here that ain't in the history books.

The Colonel acknowledged her graciously and moved on. 'The captain is a Rokuro Oki. The ship's currently on furlough around Miraiceria. I'll let him know to stand by and send you the callsigns you'll need. By the way - who did you pick to go in on this one?'

Simultaneously, Harlock, Kei and Yattaran all turned and pointed at me. I waved.

'You're insane, Harlock! You're sending in that pit bull?'

I took great offence at that. 'Hey! I resemble that remark!' I said it bristling enough that it took a moment before the joke registered.

He let out a heavy sigh. 'Never mind, I've read his file. Dr. Jones - I hope you know what you're doing?'

'Just 'Ali'. Leave me to my job, Danny boy. You just keep up your end of the bargain,' I replied a little pissily. 'As long as your fishy friends turn up on time, it'll be fine.'

Huh. Famous last words. I really should know better.

* * *

So, it takes us a week or two to find a convenient staging post for me to sneak into one of the crews for this outfit. One of those hick planets a bit like Heavy Meldar, one of our favourite haunts. Small towns, low population, but get enough through traffic to be viable. There's talk of some kind of space-railway running through the galaxy once this war's over. Some plans got shelved after the homecoming war, but if they ever did build it, this is one of those dreary little stops you see on old warp-vids that purport to show life back on Earth pre-atomic age. Steam trains pulling into dusty little wooden stations in the middle of a desert, a couple of equally dusty old men rocking backwards and forwards on the platform, spitting periodically into a bucket.

Yeah. Okay, that's a pretty spot on picture of good ole MX-201, now I think about it. This planet's a little better populated, caters for transient workers, like yours truly is passing himself off as. Reminds me of a few places I'd passed through, must be more than twenty years ago now, young, dumb, thinking I'd make my fortune out on the fringe. Which, since I ended up on a haunted, cursed pirate ship, following a nihilist and an idealist in turn, might not have been the best choice, in hindsight. I sure as hell wasn't gonna get rich doing what I do.

But cutting to the chase, it really wasn't hard to get hired. The CV was legit, after all. Just had to change a few names and dates is all, and Yattaran hadn't let me down getting me updated in the system. That, and guys with my background aren't exactly thick on the ground out in the boonies. I practically got friction burns from how fast they signed me up. So in less than a week, I was standing on the main deck of one of the biggest production ships I'd ever seen, being given the tour by some bean counter who just kept whittering on about cost savings.

Yeah, I had to fight the urge to break his nose and tell him what I thought of their budgetary savings... This ship alone was enough to give me sleepless nights. The designer was well known in engineering circles for his - shall we say 'less than passenger friendly' safety record. Spotting a Zone Shipping Inc plate in prominent places did not fill me with confidence.

At least an automated ore processing ship didn't carry a large crew. And this far out, I wasn't likely to run into anyone who knew me from the old days... (I never seem to learn...) so I was rather enjoying myself getting under this tosser's skin - since he knew fuck all about the actual processes he was waxing lyrical about, and correcting his lousy chemistry was a blast.

So perhaps I wasn't paying attention at the moment the whole plan went tits up a couple of days later... I was angling for a trip over to one of the asteroids currently being hollowed out, when a familiar creepy voice finally registered on my smug, complacent brain.

'If it isn't the troublesome Doctor Jones... I thought we'd managed to kill you.'

There isn't much that can scare me. I live on a creepy haunted battleship shaped like bony body parts and powered by some weird-ass alien dark matter that self repairs itself and if it feels like it, its crew. But this voice took me back over a decade, and my blood felt like ice in my veins. But hey. I'm a member of the Arcadia's crew. We don't back down from what scares us. I turned, trying to do the whole baddass thing. 'Doctor Hechi. I was kind of hoping the same thing. Looks like we're both disappointed.'

Inwardly, the cogs were turning. What the fuck was this bastard doing here? I didn't buy coinkydink for a moment. Doppler's chief hench hunchback hardly ever left his master's side, leg humping sycophant that he is.

Oh, and still one seriously ugly motherfucker... Doppler's people generally have this elitist Chosen Race thing going... all beautiful people and gengineered perfection.

I guess somewhere the universe insists on a balance at the opposite end of the bell shaped curve for any given value of human attractiveness. If so, Hechi is it. Hunched, scrawny, and physically twisted, with long, lank, greasy black hair, and pale, watery, almost colourless eyes.

Eye. Singular. Oops. Looks as though I missed his brain after all. He now sported a weird mechanical optic where his eye used to be, wired over his face like some insect had taken root next to his hooked nose. He wore a long robe to cover his deformities, but gave the impression of a spidery predator as he limped forwards. I broke out into a cold sweat as he approached.

Lurking behind him was one of the brown uniformed Elite Guard. Gudon, I realised. Still being worn as a support for a waxed moustache that looked as though it could stand up all on its ownsome... Figures. At least it wasn't Luger or Prague. Someone actually _competent_...

Two hulking brick walls in metal masks had hold of my arms and forced me to my knees before I could make a break for it. Though where the hell I thought I could run to on a bloody spaceship is anyone's guess.

A couple of years ago I'd given our then wet-behind-the-ears captain a shitload of grief for getting caught with his pants down on a covert job.

Fuck. The captain was never going to let me live this down. Assuming he ever heard about it, that is. Doppler has a way of making problems disappear.

'You left quite a mess behind you, Jones.' Hechi hissed and gurgled his way through the sentence like a bad warp-film villain. At least he hadn't opened with 'I have you now, my pretty...'

Ugh. Now _I_ needed Em's brain bleach...

'Oh, I dunno. I think your face is an improvement...'

I sagged, gasping for breath as Gudon's fist took me in the solar plexus. Me and my mouth. I never learn. 'Is that the best you can do?' I snarled at him. He drew back his fist again to take aim at my face, but fortunately for my handsome fizzog, Hechi called him off.

'Now then, Captain. Enough. We want Dr. Jones able to talk, after all. Be such a shame for him to come all this way for nothing.'

Talk? Huh. What the fuck could _I_ tell _them_?

More to the point, who told them I was coming? Hechi wouldn't visit a bog standard op like this. If the SDF had sprung a leak, we had bigger problems than my imminent existence failure... Crap.

It's hard to think straight with a couple of faceless gorillas dragging you along by your arms, almost tearing them out of their sockets. They didn't give me a chance to get to my feet, so my knees took some abuse as well, bumping along the deck. Shoved into a shuttle, trussed up like a roast chicken and tossed into a corner - after they'd stripped searched me, none too gently. Thankfully they left me my boxers, otherwise little Ali would have had a rough time... but without sweater and leathers, a shuttle is damn cold. There's a reason for the thick gear and gloves, after all.

But if I thought the shuttle was cold, it was nothing compared to the bone numbing chill inside the part mined asteroid.

* * *

I was dragged into a small hollowed out chamber, and tied to twin pillars of rock fixed with two iron loops. Bloodstains on the floor were visible even in the dim light. They had to shorten the ropes for my height, but even so, the implications given the height of their average worker made me feel queasy. Little arms wouldn't have reached those loops, and small legs wouldn't have reached the ground. To be beaten in such a position...

Gudon tightened my ropes, whilst Hechi leered from a safe distance. 'Just so you know, I'm really not that kind of boy,' I simpered at them. Gudon just jerked the ropes harder, making me grunt. Then he slammed a fist into an old scar on my side, catching the old wound just where it had healed over a spur of broken rib, years healed but still sore if I caught it wrong. It left me gasping for breath, but I did manage to slam my forehead into his nose before he could pull away.

He stepped back, blood dripping out from between his fingers where they clutched his shattered nose. '...king bastard,' he snarled. I gave him my best shit eating grin. The one that could even wind the captain up to breaking point.

'Aw... diddums. Did I hurt the poor ickle sadist?' I smirked. Recovering, he backhanded me in the face, splitting my lip.

'I should have paid those mercenaries more to bring your head back in a bag,' Gudon snarled back.

Oh, well _that_ explained a lot. Huh. Thought it was a bit strange the way those claimjumpers who'd left me for dead before Harlock had found me had been so keen on taking out the miserable rock I'd been on all those years ago. Guess Hechi held a grudge about my whistleblowing on his little scam out on the rim. Or maybe my shooting the deformed prick in the head had something to do with it.

'Enough,' Hechi rasped. 'Gudon. Try to persuade this aging rockhound to tell me what he knows.'

'About what?' I asked. I'd been on a fact finding mission, to get dirt on this op in the hope of scoring one for the good guys. Now this shambling freak wanted to interrogate _me_?

'Why, your captain, crew and his remarkable ship,' Hechi drooled.

'Fuck you.' Eloquent, pithy and to the point as ever. That's me.

Aaaand that's when it got really bad.

* * *

I was really, really sorry I'd ever taken the piss out of the captain for the time he got himself into a similar situation, a couple of years back. I'd thought him a bit of a drip at the time: not having even half the physical presence or charisma of the first Harlock. Or the balls.

Hell, I'd resented him for having the chutzpah to take on a name I didn't believe he had the right to. Seeing how he'd taken the shit dished out by his captors, and still forced himself to his feet with a smile and a quip when rescued... He'd gone up in my eyes that day.

I now had a pretty good idea how hard that must have been, sagging between the ropes with blood pouring down my back, which felt as though it was on fire. Gudon was old fashioned; he like leather whips, not the newfangled electric jobs. Blood, not burns. I think the freak got off on it.

I didn't break; at least, not before his arm gave out. But my throat was raw from screaming. Thankfully, there was no one I knew listening in, or I'd never live it down.

They left me alone, for a while. Still tied, and even though I could stand, the effort was almost too much. But I was determined not to fall. Why, I couldn't quite figure. No one knew I'd been blown after all. They'd wait for a signal that never came. What was the point in toughing it out?

So after all these years, this was how it was gonna end, huh? Dying screaming like a girl in the dark, blood running down the back of my shorts? Man, I hoped Yattaran would never hear about this. The fat old bastard would never stop laughing...

Captain Bastard and Doctor Doom turned up about then. I tried out my best captain-baiting sneer. 'Oooh, more whipping? I must have been a good boy. When do I get my gimp mask?'

Hechi leered into my face, sadly just out of reach of a head butt. 'A mask could be arranged, but I doubt you'd be so useful after it was fitted. There are still issues with the technology...'

Interesting... so there was something hinky about those metal masks, huh? Gudon was fiddling with a small box, and I pantomimed craning to see over Hechi's hunchback. 'More torture? Puh-lease... didn't anyone ever tell you it's unreliable? I mean...' I stopped, because under his ridiculous facial hair, Gudon was smirking. He held up a pressure syringe.

'Oh, that wasn't for information. That was purely personal. This, however...' he strode over and there was a cold trickle down my arm as he pressed the thing against my neck. 'This should have you singing in no time.' He backed away warily, keeping a close eye on me. His nose looked swollen and bruised, I noticed gleefully.

Then the stuff they'd put in me hit like a freight train. I gagged, threw up, but since I hadn't eaten in a day or two, just choked on the rancid acidic taste of bile. I spat to try and get the taste out of my mouth, but I hadn't had anything to drink either, and it was like spitting cotton.

The only upside was that it killed the pain. The downside though... shit. I recognised this stuff. Once they started asking questions, I'd be giggling and spilling everything.

Hechi limped closer, nodding as though satisfied as he peered into my face. 'So, Dr Jones. Why don't you start telling me about your ship?'

I tried to bite my tongue, and the irony of _me_ trying to keep my mouth shut elicited a giggle. Then I had a thought..

'T'was on the Good Ship Venus...' I began to warble in my dusty, scream-damaged croak... 'egad you should have seen us. The figurehead was carved in lead in the shape of the captain's. ..'

An hour or two later, having exhausted my repertoire of filthy shanties, I was well into a rendition of one song I'd hated at university. Well into into the second verse: ...'Plato they say could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey everyday. Ari...'

Then the shooting started.

The air was thin, and poor, so I wasn't thinking too straight, but that was definitely gunfire.

Question was: whose?

I didn't have long to wait for an answer. The corridor outside my little chamber lit up like fireworks, and a familar, burly figure filled the entry, assault rifle cradled in her arms like a baby. Gudon was quick on the draw, but Anita's rifle butt caught him under the jaw before he could clear his holster. For all her size, she couldn't half move fast. She brought her weapon round to cover Hechi, how cowered in the corner. 'Nita, watch that ugly little shit!'

Too late. The shifty little bastard was already half way dwon a second corridor which had opened behind him. She let out a curse she'd have washed Zack's mouth out for using. Gudon however was out for the count.

'Damn it, Ali! You're a mess...'

I grinned bloodily at her. 'Nice to see you too, Anita.' Our ex special forces chef stroke quartermaster laid her weapon down and began to untie me, just as another, rather slighter figure ran in, cloak flapping behind him. 'Captain?'

He ran over and helped Anita lower me to the ground carefully. 'Damn, Ali. What happened? Did you forget the safety word?'

I'd have returned his grin if I'd had the strength. His eye though... that wasn't laughing. He looked relieved.

'You've been waiting a couple of years to throw that one back at me, haven't you?' I asked. He eased me down to the ground gently, though with only a skimpy bit of fabric between my best assets and cold hard rock, 'gently' was pushing it.

'Trust me, I'd happily never have had to.' He told me. 'Anita - doesn't this sartorially challenged asshole on the floor look about Ali's size?'

She strolled over to check, came back a couple of minutes later with trousers and a jacket. The bastard had tiny feet though. My size twelves were going to have to stay cold. Between them, they managed to shoehorn me into the uniform. Well. At least I wouldn't die of exposure...

'Kei and Carlos have cleared out the rock,' Anita reported. 'Yattaran says the ship bugged out without a fight. They left the kids behind, and Kei wants to know if we wait for the Aquarius or bug out now?'

'Don't wait,' I gasped out. I grabbed Harlock's sleeve. 'They prefer to blow things to shit. No witnesses. .' I didn't need to elaborate. Harlock nodded to Anita, and the burly lass grabbed her gun and hightailed it out, already yelling orders into her comms.

That left just me and the captain, and he helped my sorry ass to its feet. 'Think you can walk to the bullet?'

'I guess.' I grunted. I looked him up and down. 'Expecting trouble?' I pointed to the cloak.

'Kei insisted. She likes that energy beam warping thing it does. Doesn't like me being shot at in enclosed spaces.'

'Huh. Great. If you get shot, you know she'll blame me, right?'

He grinned. 'Then you'd better hope I don't.' He grunted as I kind of sagged against him as we walked. 'Ever heard of a gym, Ali? I swear you've put on a few pounds since the last time we did this...'

'Bite me,' I snapped at him testily. I looked down at Gudon, slowly coming round and shivering in his tighty whities. 'Captain... would you mind?'

He speaks fluent Ali, thankfully. He leaned me up against the wall, and hauled Gudon to his feet, holding him in front of me, the bastard swaying on his feet, whilst I contemplated where to place a good right. He smirked, certain that I wouldn't be able to do much damage.

Pity he didn't spot the rock I'd palmed until it smashed into his face. I got splattered with blood and something jellylike, and he screamed and fell to the floor clutching his face, the captain not bothering to hold him up.

'Want me to shoot him?' He asked, all innocence as though asking me what I wanted for lunch. I shook my head, still stuffed full of cotton as it was. ' Nah. I like it better this way.'

The rock chose that moment to shudder badly, and we both almost went down, only the wall stopped me from flattening my own captain. 'That didn't feel...' I got no further. There was a tell-tale rumbling noise I knew all too well, and I tried to shove the captain out if the way, but the damn fool pushed back, flicking that stupid cloak over us, just as the light went out and a massive roar of falling rock was the last thing I remember hearing.

* * *

Darkness, dust, and thin, cold air. I coughed and spluttered, and tried to heave the weight off my lacerated back. Said weight groaned and stirred, and I had to put a steadying hand out to warn him not to move. He froze, then slowly, carefully, tried to slide off me.

I swear it took what was left of the skin on my back. A faint light glimmered as he flicked on his belt light.

'Ali?' Harlock asked.

'Mostly here. Why aren't we dead?'

'Gravity field in the cloak, remember? I can't reach my commlink, can you?'

'Can't see for shit, and daren't move.' I coughed again, trying desperately not to disturb the rubble around us. From what little I could see we were trapped fore and aft. In these scenarios though, you never know how unstable the situation is. 'If you do move, do it slowly.'

With a bit of care, we were able do disentangle ourselves and sit up, barely. Headroom being at something of a premium. Between the thin air, blood loss and shock, I wasn't feeling too great, and it must have showed.

'If you are going to puke, try to aim to the side,' my captain asked, all sweetness and light. I flipped him the finger,.

'You're all heart...'

He grinned. I managed a pained grimace in return. Cool. He concentrated on his comlink, which looked about as dead as our chances of getting out of here alive. Thankfully we'd been separated from Gudon by the rockfall. But stuck is stuck.

'How did you know?' I asked eventually, finally getting my ducks in a row. 'I thought I was a goner.'

'Dan. Seems he caught wind of a set up. Apparently your name was flagged by some interested parties, and your description made the rounds.'

'Huh. So he did spring a leak..' I muttered. The captain shot me a none too friendly look.

'Might have helped if you'd been a bit more up front about how much trouble you were in when you parted company from these guys way back when. I'm usually fine with the crew keeping their former indiscretions to themselves, but not when lives are on the line, Ali.'

He didn't raise his voice, but the disappointment was clear. I had fucked up, and even if it had been my ass on the line, he'd felt honour bound to swoop in and save it. He didn't have to hammer home the point. I got it. I'd run into this eyes wide shut, and we both knew it.

Silence, heavy as the rocks around us. Eventually I cleared my throat. 'I blew the whistle on one if their ops a year or so before I came aboard. Got into a scuffle with Doppler's right hand man, a nasty little spider called Hechi. Brilliant scientist but a piss poor excuse for a human being. Thought I'd killed the bastard, but he seems to have survived. Holds a grudge too. This isn't the first time he's tried to have me killed.' There was a lot more to it than that, but right now I didn't feel like sharing.

'Looked more like torture to me,' he pointed out.

'Yeah, that was the entrée. Seems he thought I'd cough up some dirt on you and the Arcadia.'

Silence.

'Captain?'

'I'm thinking.'

'Well, that explains the whirring noise...' I quipped. Even in the dimming light I could feel the look I got for that. 'But for the record, I'm glad to see ya. Didn't think you'd bother.'

He looked offended. 'Did you really think I'd leave you behind? Last time as I recall I jumped out of a perfectly servicable spacecraft with only an untested grav cloak between me and being scraped up by a spatula.'

'Yeah, but that time Kei was hanging up next to me,' I pointed out, quite reasonably I thought. His icy tone hadn't registered, and I carried on blithely. 'I mean, it's not as though we even like each other. Not that you're as bad as I feared, but you're still a bit lacking at times. Sit on your bloody hands rather than make a decision, if you think people might get hurt. It's like you never got over that damn accident, and by now I'd have thought you'd be wising up a bit. I mean, your brother was a total shit, boohoo. And so what if your teenage crush sent you a Dear John as a farewell gift? You've been shagging the arse off one of the finest pieces of ass I've ever set eyes on for nearly three years, so you kinda traded up there... the girl would turn the universe upside down to protect ya as well...'

You could have frozen vodka with his voice as he ground out a mild 'do go on...'

'Seriously? You know, we're still taking bets below decks on whether she goes on top. And no-one was sure what she saw in you at first. I mean, the old captain.. even guys would get ideas. He had that whole dark, brooding fallen angel thing going. But you... yer just kinda ordinary. At least, you were. Kind got a bit more scary since. Sometimes though, yer just a bit too nice, if you know what I mean?'

By this time I was babbling, and grinning like a loon. I patted him on the arm. I felt I had to add something positive. 'S'all right though. You're our captain. We love ya, honest.'

He sighed. 'Ali, when you've lost sight of daylight, for fuck's sake, stop digging...'

Either the drugs were wearing off, or something in that oh so quiet voice finally got through the fog in my brain. 'Captain?' Shitshitshit... why oh why did I find the worst moments to shoot my mouth off?

If I was lucky he'd just leave me here.

'I'd have come for you back on Lar Metal even if Kei hadn't been with you. If you still believe I wouldn't, I'll be happy to pound the message into your thick skull until it goes in, once we get back to the Arcadia.'

There was a tightness about his mouth and a note in his voice that reminded me sharply of his predecessor right then. It sank in that I probably couldn't have insulted him worse if I'd tried. The ground wasn't going to open up under me anytime soon, so I shut my flapping trap and curled up around my pain, trying not to flinch as the jacket chafed my torn back. Then a sharp pain in my leg began to register, and I poked around a bit. 'Erh.. cap'n? I think I've sprung a leak...'

I pulled out a nice sharp shard of rock and proudly waved it in front of his nose, oblivious to the fact that this had been plugging the hole it had made in my thigh. 'Oops.'

He shoved me back to the floor and raised my leg up on a rock. Working fast, he cut away the fabric, yanked his scarf off his neck, wadded it into a pad and pressed down hard.

At that point clarity returned all too quickly, and I screamed my head off.

'Press down, you idiot, and stop trying to deafen me,' he snapped. 'Seriously, Zack's tougher than some of you guys...'

I held down the scarf as hard as I could, as he scrabbled about for a small rock. He placed it in front of him, dialled down his pistol, and zapped it a couple of times Satisfied that it was glowing red hot, he pulled off one glove, placed it around the rock and picked the whole kit and kaboodle up with his gloved hand. 'When I tell you, lift that damn scarf out of the way lie back, and think of Arcadia.'

Still a little bamboozled I nodded, and on command, did as I was told.

Yeah. I think we can gloss over the next bit. I'd like a _little_ dignity left...

* * *

I woke up later, my leg still propped up and throbbing, my back against the wall and the captain leaning quietly next to me. His cloak covered both of us, but if it was doing anything about the bone deep cold, I sure as hell couldn't tell.

'I think my arse might be frozen to the rock, ' I grumbled.

'You and me both,' was the tired reply. 'The good news is the commlink works, and help is on the way.'

Oh shit. 'So how bad _is_ the bad news?'

'This rock's currently held together with spit and a prayer. If they start moving anything, it's likely to break up.'

'Captain?'

'Hmm?'

'Next time, just give me the good news...'

'Don't worry. Tochiro's been talking to the Aquarius, and they have a plan...'

Great. Now my continued existence rested on the plans of a bunch of wet SDF troops and a guy who'd been dead for a century... assuming I didn't succumb to frostbite. Or gangrene from a quick field cauterisation. Or from the nice raw steak that had once been my strapping manly torso.

'Ali, shut the fuck up...' Harlock said testily.

Oh. Rambling out loud again... whoops. I tried to concentrate. 'So what does the little guy have in mind?'

Joking about his existential issues aside, I like the Arcadia's builder. Hell, we all do. Supposedly he was the old captain's best ( or only, depending on the source...) friend. Hard to imagine two more different guys, but what the hey. Tochiro was probably one if the few people who would put up with him, if he was as difficult back then as he was when I knew him. He's one of the sweetest guys you'll meet, and one of the smartest. Just. You know. Dead. But we've all hung out with his hologram, and he's had our backs more than once.

'He won't say, which makes me a little nervous,' he confessed. 'All he'd say was we might want to hold our breath...'

Master of understatement much?

Gravity fields, water and rocks don't mix well with human bodies, especially when one of them was already a little the worse for wear. Even shielded with the captain's cloak, we washed up in one of the Arcadia's holds, bedraggled and soaking wet in a pool of what tasted like seawater.

A tall young man in an SDF uniform was extending his hand, and Harlock took it, letting the other guy haul him to his feet. Me, I just lay there gasping like a carp on the chopping board.

'Captain Oki, I assume?' The captain asked. The other man grinned at him, his hair flopping over one eye.

'Sorry to cut it a bit close. Your people had to work out the parameters for the gravity field on the fly, and synching that with our water handling...' he broke off. 'You know, not many people know our abilities... I'd appreciate it...'

The captain nodded as he shook the guy's hand. 'No one will hear it from us, you have my word.'

Me, I was still sitting on the floor in the middle of a puddle, fending off Doc as she poked and prodded and called for a gurney to haul my sorry ass to sick bay. For some reason the only thing I could bring to the table was to point at the SDF captain and ask: 'why is his hair blue?'

After that, I shut down for a bit.

* * *

My screw up was a qualified win, of sorts. We got the kids out of this site, but Gudon got away, and so did the factory ship. Hechi was in the wind, and Doppler knew the SDF was onto him.

There had been a leak at Danny boy's end. And that was going to come back to bite them on the ass in the not too distant future. Someone had sold me down the river to Doppler, and it would be a few years before I got to the bottom of _that_ mystery. However that, and the fallout, were really Dan's story, and we didn't have much to do with it.

Kei was pissed, of course. I'd made her precious loverboy come get me, and almost got him killed. To my surprise, he told her to stow it. With a wink to me when she stormed out shaking her fine, firm ass in a flounce Emeraldas would have found hard to equal.

'That's you on the couch for a week,' I told him from my infirmary bed. He shrugged.

'She'll get over it. Besides, she was worried about you as well.'

'Hides it well,' I snarked. 'Look, I'm sorry it went tits up down there. I should have told you I had history...'

'Yes.'

For a moment it felt like I'd gone back three or four years. I half expected the old captain to be standing there, his cold reserve chilling the room and making you hope like hell his attention would quickly shift onto some other poor bastard. But with this one, thankfully, it soon passed.

He sat on the edge of the bed. 'I don't blame you for holding out. I just wish you'd trusted me enough to talk to me before I sent you in.'

'You knew I was holding out.'

He shrugged, that minimal little gesture I could never figure out how he'd picked up on. It was pure old Harlock. 'I suspected, but you were still the best choice for the job. So I just stuck a liitle closer to you than we'd planned.'

To which decision I owed my miserable life. 'They wanted to know about you. About the ship. I didn't tell 'em anything.'

He grinned, another lightning change in mood. 'I know. Anita found the disk in Gudon's pocket. I think she only let me, Kei and Yattaran hear it though...'

Oh. Great. If that lazy lard ball had got hold of it, the whole bloody ship would be listening to my greatest hits by morning... which Harlock knew damn well, because my mercurial, boy-next-door captain was smirking his socks off.

'Dan's got Doppler's number now, Ali. He'll have difficulty operating in their space from now on. Tadashi and some of the older kids can testify as to the scope of the operation and their treatment. And if the bastard crosses our path, I'll let the Arcadia do the talking.' He stood up. 'Next time though...'

'No need for that,' I said, coming to a decision. 'You got time to listen?'

He sat back down, taking the chair this time. 'Always.'

So I took a deep breath, and started getting rid of the weight I'd held close to my chest for over a decade.

* * *

 _Author's notes:_

 _For those who don't have access to supplementary materials, Ali is the name given in the concept artwork to the scowling, bad tempered blond crewman._

 _Ichimonji Dantetsu and Henry Douglas had a brief role in Frozen Harvest, but are from Danguard Ace. As are Doppler, Hechi, Gudon. Assuming I get round to it, I might tackle a 'retelling'of this one day..._

 _Rokuro Oki is from the sequel manga to Submarine Super 99. The one where they take a Submarine to the stars... The suiseijin (aquatic humans) appeared in those manga, the anime version of SS99, and in Marine Snow no Densetsu. The tailed humans who live underground are a reference to the manga 'Nazca'._


End file.
